BBC Music Magazine, July 2007
Regular readers may know that I have been greatly enjoying Canadian Geneviève Soly’s discs of Graupner’s harpsichord music. This one, Volume 6, comes as rather a surprise as I had mistakenly believed her previous disc was the concluding one. So much the better for us, for this issue contains music of charm and distinction. Soly is a formidable Graupnerian, performing a valuable service in editing, performing and generally rehabilitating the reputation of this gifted contemporary of Bach and Telemann. Graupner, you may recall, competed successfully for the post of Thomaskantor at Leipzig and only his employer’s refusal to release him from his duties at Darmstadt left the way clear for Bach. The disc’s subtitle “Spring and Winter” stems from the inclusion of a suite Martius (March) from Graupner’s collection Monatliche Clavir Früchte (1723), and another, Winter – in F minor like Vivaldi’s Winter – the only surviving partita in a cycle of Four Seasons. The music of these suites, and of the remaining two, is elegant, vivacious and with a pleasing “mixed style” individuality which could neither be mistaken for Couperin on the one hand, nor Bach nor Telemann on the other. A Polonaise from the G major Partita apparently Graupner’s last keyboard work, is immediately striking for its resemblance to one by CPE Bach in the 1725 Anna Magdalena Music Book. Other delights are some fine sarabandes and courantes. Performance ***** Sound *****
Album Description
The program on this recording covers nearly 35 years of Graupner’s creative output. It includes two works that have come down to us in original editions (those of 1722 and of 1733) and two in manuscript form, one of them autograph (around 1750-1753), the other in the hand of Samuel Endler, vice-Kapellmeister of the Darmstadt court (around 1720)
